UM Members Celebrate Chinese New Year with Couplets

Celebrating
the Chinese New Year with couplets is no longer a tradition only among the
Chinese. In this issue of My UM, several UM faculty members and students
share their thoughts on the Chinese New Year and the traditional Chinese style
of celebration. Moreover, they each wrote a celebratory message for the New
Year.

Lucky
Star Shining on Exam Days

Hannah
Keely Sin from South Africa is a first-year student in the Department of
English. Half Chinese and half African, Sin moved to Foshan, Guangdong province,
at age seven. She confesses that although she started learning Chinese at a
very young age, she only has limited knowledge of Classical Chinese. Her
grandmother observes traditional customs and celebrates every Lunar New Year in
the traditional way.

‘Before
each Lunar New Year, my grandma would put up couplets in different places
around the house. I never fully understand the meanings of those couplets, but
I guess they express wishes for good things like fortune and health.’ One
couplet that left a particularly deep impression on her read ‘Lucky Star
Shining Above’. She found it amusing, ‘If you look up and see the stars, it
will bring you good luck?’ But she has learned that ‘When in China, do as the
Chinese do’, which means writing couplets for the Chinese New Year. ‘Not only
will this bring a festive feel to my dormitory, it might also bring me good
luck in the final exams. But of course I will work hard, instead of cramming at
the last minute,’ she says.

Learning to Write Chinese

Rui da Silva from Portugal is a lecturer in
the Department of Portuguese. He wrote a couplet that read, ‘Diligence is the
way to scale the high mountain of books; hard work is the boat that crosses the
boundless ocean of learning.’ He
treats this maxim as his motto and uses it to motivate his students to work
hard and chase their dreams. ‘Whenever I encounter a difficulty, I remind
myself of this couplet,’ he says. Silva developed a strong interest in Chinese
culture in middle school, majored in Chinese in college, and taught Chinese at
an overseas Confucius Institute and a university. Some foreigners think Chinese
is a difficult language to learn because the strokes are not easy to memorise,
and Silva agrees. He says, ‘It takes a lot of time and energy to learn to write
Chinese characters. Repetition is the only way to memorise the strokes.
Sometimes a little imagination helps. Interesting stories can also aid memory.
Writing Chinese words allows you to understand the spirit of Chinese culture.’

‘Fu’ Upside Down

Half Portuguese and half American, Benjamim
Roth Soares is a fourth year student in the Department of Communication. Born
in Macao, he divided his time growing up between Zhuhai and Macao. Although
Chinese is not his mother tongue, he started learning Cantonese under the
influence of his peers. He loves Chinese culture and enjoys the festive
atmosphere of the Chinese New Year. When he first saw people pasting the
Chinese character ‘Fu’ (which means luck or fortune) upside down on their
doors, he thought it was a mistake. Later he learned that it was intentional,
because the Chinese word ‘upside down’ sounds the same as ‘arrive’. So pasting
the character ‘Fu’ upside
down means luck or fortune will arrive. For Soares, the Lunar New Year, like
Christmas, is a very important festival. ‘The entire country is celebrating,
and everybody returns home to be reunited with their family,’ he says. Planning
to graduate this year , he wishes for good fortune, and hopes to continue to
enjoy music and play his guitar after starting work.

An Interesting Phenomenon

Hans-Georg Moeller from Germany is a professor
in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Programme. He has noticed an
interesting phenomenon: the atmosphere of the Lunar New Year or Christmas is
defined by the decorative lights on the streets and the activity in shopping
malls. ‘Before every Lunar New Year or Christmas, everybody gets anxious to
book air tickets so they can travel abroad with their friends and spend a long
holiday . But what about the original meaning of these festivals? Nowadays,
aided and abetted by the media, holidays are becoming increasingly
commercialised.’ Prof Moeller recalls the old days when the Lunar New Year and
Christmas were joyous times when family members reunite and renew their
attachments. As to couplets for the upcoming Chinese New Year, he is inclined
to write Lao Tzu's ‘The movement of the Tao by contraries proceeds’, which
admonished people to just let it be.

Zhu Shoutong, associate director of the Centre for Chinese History
and Culture, professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature,
and executive vice president of an association of Chinese calligraphers from
Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, mainland China, and overseas, is well-versed in the
couplet culture. He is also in the habit of writing couplets for the Lunar New
Year, because it adds to a festive atmosphere and creates an intellectual
ambiance around the house. During our interview, Prof Zhu wrote a couplet to wish
My UM readers all the best in the New Year.

The Origin of Couplets

Prof Zhu explains that the predecessor of spring couplets were
peach wood charms, which were believed to have the power to keep away evil
spirits and ghosts. According to ‘Treatise on Rites’ in The Book of the Later
Han, peach wood charms were made of peach wood. They are six inches long and
three inches wide, inscribed with the names of two gods Shen Cha and Yu Lei, to
keep away evil spirits and ghosts. Prof Zhu says, ‘Chinese people have always
held words in awe. Legend has it that Cang Jie, the god believed to have
created the words we are using now, heard ghosts weeping at night after he
created words during the day. You can tell from the legend that words were held
in the highest esteem. “Showing respect to paper with words on it” has always
been part of the Chinese folk culture, for the same reason: being in awe of
words. People in ancient China wrote and pasted words on their doors as a way
to keep away evil spirits and ghosts, because they had utter confidence in the
magical power of words.’